


A Matter of Faith

by Kiiratam



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Chaos, Other, Sisters of Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9257285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: A Sister of Battle stands alone against a bloody rush of Chaos Cultists. The Emperor's will be done.





	

The forest reeked of battle - the ionization of lasfire, the stink of bolter round propellant, the bloom of fresh blood, and the vomitous sweet scent of promethium. The dead radiated outward from a small bare hillock, whose only claim to fame had been the scant advantage it offered to the defenders. Now, though, it had been consecrated by the blood of the Sisters of Battle. About the hillock were heaped the corpses of their attackers - cultists of the Ruinous Powers, led by a handful of Traitor Space Marines.

  
Sister Andromache stood alone, the last of her company. Her armor was scoured by lasfire, her purple cassock bloodstained. A jagged wound on her forehead poured blood into her right eye. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision, gory locks consecrating the grass like a Primate sprinkling holy water on the crowds.

  
The enemy - The Great Enemy - yet stood about her, their slaughter-madness undiminished. With numbers on their side, they had discarded their las-rifles and autoguns, and brandished vicious melee weapons. From the rear came a bellow, "Kill her! Claim her skull! Bloooooood!"

  
The cultists surged forward, an obedient congregation, screaming a reply to their cantor, "Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne!"

  
Andromache tried to counter their warcry, but her throat could only muster a rasping, "For the Emperor."

  
As they passed one of her fallen Sisters - Salluyah, who had sung battle hymns with greater volume than skill - Andromache fired her bolter at the promethium tanks on Salluyah's back. In the scream of the explosion, she heard her Sister one last time. Fire washed the Khornates, and some fell in a shroud of flames. But the charge continued.

  
She pivoted to another quadrant, forcing herself to fire in short bursts, sweeping across the cultists' charge like the hand of a chronometer, measuring out their last seconds. Her bolter clicked empty, and Andromache started to step back into the ranks of her sisters to reload. A half step, the sight of Sister Diomedea's half-severed head. Diomedea was the leader of Andromache's squad, had turned a scared novice into a Sister of Battle. She had always been at Andromache's left in the firing line, a comforting terror, but now, she was right and forward, bolter still in her arms.

  
Andromache advanced, tore the bolter from her superior's arms, and emptied it into the rapidly closing enemy. The rounds exploded into holy fire as they impacted, calls for blood turning into phoenix song as the air in their lungs ignited. But still, the charge continued.

  
The remaining cultists, bloody foam dripping from their mouths, closed the last few yards as Andromache drew her chainsword. A wiry woman with jagged knives leapt at Andromache, her face inverting with the warpspasm. The Sister caught her face with a gauntlet, crushing her skull as the knives skittered across her armor, catching in her cassock.

  
Andromache shifted her grip, hefting the dead cultist as a shield for her blind side. Her chainsword roared as it gobbled flesh, tearing the Khornates apart. Two fell, arms riven. Three gutted, the viscera ripped out to make footing uncertain for her foe. Others seized her shield, dragged it out of her grip by sheer weight. Those died on the ground, heads mangled by retributive strikes. But their sacrifice distracted Andromache, and gave another cultist an opportunity.

  
She reeled from the hammer-blow to her temple, staggering back, tripping over a corpse - Sister-Superior Ginnaefir, who thought grox were adorable. She scrabbled for a weapon - anything, and felt blisters raise on her hand as she grabbed an intricately inlaid pistol barrel. As Andromache frantically turned the plasma pistol about in her grip, a jolting pain wracked her stomach. The last two cultists had planted a electro-spear on her, and leapt on it like it was a shovel, punching through her armor. Twitching from the shocks, her first shots went wide, searing the ground.

  
_Sister-Superior, guide me_ , she thought. With a shriek, Andromache forced her muscles to obey her, raising her arm and roasting her tormentors with barely coherent bolts of plasma. Barely able to think, she rolled onto her side and tore the electro-spear from her gut. For an agony of time, she couldn't control herself, twitching with the aftershocks. At last, her muscles halted their spasming, and she forced herself to unsteady hands and knees, dry-heaving from the adrenaline rush.

  
"Can you stand, corpse-whore?" The voice reverberated in her bones, and she looked up at a ceramite curaiss emblazoned with blasphemous sigils. Andromache could still see spots of bright blue paint on it, and where the Imperial Aquila had been crudely ground off. "I would have you die on your feet - a worthy death for a worthy foe." She heard the Traitor Marine rev his chainsword, the skirl of metal on metal cutting through her pain, taking her back to weapon drills with her Sisters.

  
Andromache found, to her surprise, that she still held Ginnaefir's plasma pistol. She had a chance - but she needed to distract her opponent. A cough to clear her throat as she sat back on her heels. Choking on bile and ash, she chanted, " _Agistatis Ultramarini, Dominitis ultramarini_ ," the anthem of the Chapter the Marine had forsaken. She could see his face now. He might have been beautiful once, his green eyes bright in a dusky face. But his shame and betrayal made him hideous as he roared, lifting his two-handed chainsword above his head to bisect her.

  
She sprang up from kneeling, planting the plasma pistol in the gap between his curaiss and leg armor, and fired. At this range, no armor, no superhuman might, no trick of Chaos could save him. The plasma bolt ricocheted within his armor, broiling him. He toppled onto her, suddenly dead weight. Seven feet of Marine and half a ton of armor pressed against her. For a lucent second, her momentum kept her balanced. Then her gut screamed with the exertion, and her core of strength vanished.

  
The Marine crushed her to the grass, and Andromache felt a rib crack as the weight settled. She knew she would suffocate, slain not by a foe of the Imperium of Man, but by laws of nature. Choking back a sob, she began a paean to the Emperor, voice only a whisper as she fought for breath. "From the lightning/ and the tempest/ Emperor deliver us."


End file.
